Poem | Ngurang Reena

Jacques-Louis David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799, Musee du Louvre 

CONSUMED BY OUR SILENCE

Nineteen, young and ‘clean’

Innocent and thrilled

2500 kms away from home

I arrived.

2009 the year was

Location- Chandni Chowk, Central Delhi

Time- 3pm.

This is my story

Her story

This is every women’s story.

With tall dreams and soaring faith

I strode in the scorching heat

With smaller dreams & nothing to lose 

The vendor sold his subsistence in the deafening noise

For a certain figure

Negotiating bigger.

I heard the lady in the corner calling upon the mortals

Who themselves were mourners.

Little babies crying

Stray dogs and cows prying

With every blare and tootle of the car the road turned hostile.

Chaos turmoil lights sounds people

Oh, people and their infinite talk

Talk Talk Talk......

Talk that would never end

Oh, I was now frightened!

No it wasn't the clatter or the buzz

It certainly was not the stray dogs

I was frightened of them

Men!

Men and their gaudy shadows.

My heart skipped a beat.

I faded when those unnamed hands touched me

Those hands scary as night

Those hands a man's might.

I felt dwindled trying to count the pair of hands on me

They were just too many.

I died!

They advanced

From my delicate thighs

To my feeble breasts

To my powerless body.

They touched me wherever their hands could reach.

I cried.

Petrified, I protested!

Outraged, I revolted!

Futile, I was conflicted!

You know when you are tired

And you want to give up

You know when your body aches from the climb

And you let go

I was done.

I sat there unmoved

‘Used’

Yes, I sat there

Sexually abused.

Oh, I realized

My country men had an interesting approach

And that I was at fault!

A woman is itself a ‘fault’!

The always righteous men

Righteous, are they?

The ‘protector’ of us, the ‘weaker’ sex

Weaker, are we?

I remember returning home back that day

Quietly

 Absorbing the pain

Noiseless

I couldn’t hear myself

I rushed to shower

Hoping to wash away the ‘dirt’ they had put on me

Disgusted I scrubbed

To remove the stain.

I scrubbed harder this time,

To be ‘clean’ again.